Sunday, April 28, 2013

This quarter we have been working on blends. I have a blends center where the students put a picture card on the beginning blend card. The kids have been loving this center and really enjoy trying to determine the beginning blends. We have also begun a word wall of all blends! Take a look at the kids doing the center activity!

Saturday, April 27, 2013

When we tracked back in we jumped into the science curriculum all about animals. The first unit is all about fish. We discussed vocabulary words like fin, gills, scales, tail and aquarium. After a week of talking about aquariums and looking on youtube at videos of the Georgia Aquarium, we made our own aquarium. A requirement of the task was to label each vocabulary word at least once in their aquarium.

This coming week we will be starting journals and start documenting what our own fish do. (hint hint: we are getting a classroom aquarium to share with all the kindergarten classrooms) We will be using the fish for science and documenting what we see in the aquarium. I am excited for the students to be able to use their new vocabulary when looking at the classroom aquarium :)

Here was this weeks classroom activity! Also, I couldn't just let the kids make an aquarium; i saw it as a great writing activity. After the students completed their aquariums, they were able to work on writing sentences describing the aquarium they created! The kids loved it and really enjoyed watching the aquarium on youtube. I can't wait to see how thrilled they will be when they are able to document the activity of our own live aquarium!

Next, we started our writing assignment. The students worked on describing what was in their aquariums using "science" words.

In the aquarium, I see a fish. I see a dolphin. The blue fish is under the water.

In the aquarium, I see a shark. The shark is gray. The shark has sharp teeth.

The shark saw a fish. The shark ate the fish.

In the aquarium, I see a fish. It is blue. The jelly fish is small. The octopus has 8 arms.

The aquariums turned out so great! They look awesome in the hallway!

My class is becoming great at using descriptive words!! I am so proud! :)

This past week I finished up my parent conferences. A lot of parents were surprised to find out the expectations that are placed on five year old kids. As I quickly found out when I started my education and career in Elementary education, school is definitely different than it used to be. Many parents stated that their children are enjoying school and they want to know what they can do at home to supplement what is taking place at school. Every week I send home a couple pages of homework to be completed during the week. This way students don't have to do homework every night, but they are completing some homework during the week. ((This will also create a great routine for 1st grade homework.))

Here is an anchor poster I use in my classroom for shapes. Kindergarten students are expected to be able to identify shapes and explain corners, angles, sides, faces and edges. This poster will definitely help when talking about different shapes. Feel free to print this picture and use it at home!! :)

While Lake Myra was tracked out (we are a year round school) I was busy looking all over pinterest and finding so many cute Easter egg activities. Because we were tracked out for Easter, we wouldn't be able to use them during the Easter holiday. I decided that we can use them any time of the year and the kids really love it!

Over track out I created a sight word game with Easter eggs, where I put sight words on both sides of the eggs and the students have to match them and then read the sight word. I also made word family eggs, where on one side of the Easter egg there is a word family ending like -at. The other side of the egg has different letters so the students can spin the top of the egg to create different words like cat, rat, fat, spat, flat. We are going to get to these two games this coming week!! So I will be sure to snap some pictures and get them up onto the blog!

But, this week I focused on using the eggs for math. I wrote different numbers on each side of the eggs and then bought cute buckets at Michaels (at their best sale of the year!!! :)) and put larger numbers on them. The students had to find two halves of the eggs that added up to the numbers on the buckets. The buckets started out as 8,10, 12 and 14. As the week progressed I gave the students more eggs and more buckets. This was an easy activity to adapt for all of the students in my class. The kids loved it and really worked together to connect all of the eggs and fill the buckets!

Beginning of the week, using only four buckets.

Later in the week when I added two more buckets!! The kids did awesome!

Monday, April 8, 2013

I have linked my latest Mother's Day Activities to TheHappyTeacher blog! Go on over and check out all of the resources on her blog. Mother's Day Linky Party My product is the 18th resource that was submitted. I am really just starting out at all of this, linky party stuff, so I hope I did this correctly! :)

Here is a **FrEe** sample of what is offered in my product in TheHappyTeacher linky party.

Friday, April 5, 2013

I have added a couple products to the Teaching Blog Addict sight! It is their two year anniversary! This is a great sight to find free resources for your classroom! Thank you TBA for sponsoring such an amazing giveaway!!! :)

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

My students have been getting a little bored of reading sight words off flashcards so I came up with an interactive GAME! The students roll a dice or spin a spinner and then look at the game board. Depending on the color they rolled or spun that is the line they read! I used a pencil and paperclip to use the spinners! Wooden dice from any craft store would work after you color them! The kids really like to race eachother and I LOVE to hear they reading their sight words and numbers. Both of these skills are part of the Common Core Standards.

The idea to create a huge number puzzle came from a friend of mine. She is a school psychologist and she is working with a kindergarten teacher that is looking for new fun ways to teach her students about numbers and the different ways that number can be represented. This got me thinking about what I could do to help! So I created a HUGE floor puzzle that uses numbers 1-20. Each number is represented in six different ways. ( the number, number word, tallys, tens frame, organized pictures, and non organized pictures) All six ways a number can be represented align with the common core for Kindergarten.

My whole class worked on this puzzle and had a great time organizing it! After all of the puzzle pieces were organized and put together, I of course took pictures but I also put them into seperate baggies. I ended up with 4 different bags. One bag for numbers 1-5, 6-10, 11-15 and 16-20. This way the pieces stay somewhat oragnized :) Also, you dont want to be giving students numbers 16-20 if they really need work on numbers 1-10.

The students in my class had a BLAST putting this puzzle together. This was a center during math centers; this way every student got to help put it together! :)

So this quarter the Kindergarten team at Lake Myra decided that by the end of third quarter, we wanted our students to be able to sound out three letter words and be able to spell them. So, my creative mind came up with an idea for students to be able to work independently with pictures and magnet letters to create words that matched the pictures!

Students loved this literacy center because it was something new, and they had never seen these pictures before! They also got to use the magnet letters, as long as they promised to keep them organized! :)

This idea has been created and put into my Teachers Pay Teachers store! Beginning, Middle, End CVC Building This product includes the pictures and an alphabet to use, if you dont have magnet letters in your classroom!

There is a link on the top left of my blog to my TpT store, if you would like to check out what else I have created for classroom use! :)

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

The last day of school before Lake Myra tracked out, our class got together with Miss Quinn's class and we completed literacy centers and a beautiful craft! We had students complete the sentence "I like spring because..." and then cut the sentence strip like grass. They painted their hands and made beautiful tulips with their handprint!

While some students were making their craft, others were playing sight word bingo, listening to tumble books on the computer, reading books in the book center and playing letter fluency games. It was so much fun for the students to be able to interact with another class while practicing their literacy skills.

Before Lake Myra tracked out, our classroom did a graphing activity with jelly beans. The students had a bunch of fun sorting, graphing and answering addition questions about the jelly beans. This activity was fun but it also included essential skills for Kindergarten students to know and practice.

The students were with their math buddies, and they received a plate of jelly beans. They sorted the jelly beans by color and then graphed how many of each color they had. After graphing, the students completed sentences about what color had the MOST and LEAST jelly beans. Then they completed addition sentences relating to how many red jelly beans plus pink jelly beans.

Overall, the students loved doing something a little different in math! Oh and they got to eat a jelly bean! :) I don't think anyone was a fan of the black jelly beans!